What Are Awesome Hebrew and Christian Bible Verses for Weddings?

What Are Awesome Hebrew and Christian Bible Verses for Weddings?

Q: I’m hoping you guys can help me. We’re having an interfaith (Jewish/Christian) religious wedding, and we’re starting to pull together our wedding service. (Thanks, by the way, for all your awesome resources on that.) We’re at the point of wanting to select some religious text to use as readings, and we are hoping to think beyond First Corinthians. No knock on First Corinthians, it’s obviously on the greatest hits list for a reason, but we’re wondering what other passages people have used and loved. Given our mixed religious backgrounds, we’re definitely looking for select verses from both the Torah/Hebrew Bible, as well as the New Testament. Since APW ladies are some of the smartest ladies around, I was hoping to plumb the depths of their souls (get it?) and find out what bible verses they used for their own weddings… so we can steal them… as you do.

OkAY, religious folks, what have you got? We know you guys have great (and sometimes moody) taste in readings, and we want to hear all your best stuff. Torah, Bible, all happily accepted!

If you want the APW community’s two cents, send it to QUESTIONS AT APRACTICALWEDDING DOT COM, and we’ll do our best to crowdsource you some answers!

9 #LazyGirl Wedding Solutions from Zazzle

Wedding_Cards

By now, you’ve probably figured out that the wedding industry (or maybe Pinterest to be more specific) is out to make you agonize over every single wedding decision ever. And by agonize, I mean in a blood, sweat, and glue gun kind of way. But there are two common misconceptions about weddings and DIY that Pinterest has all wrong:

  • THAT DIY IS CHEAPER
  • THAT DIY IS A GOOD OPTION FOR THE THINGS YOU DON’T CARE ENOUGH TO SPEND MONEY ON

The truth is, there’s nothing worse than agonizing over a project you have no emotional investment in (not that I know anything about that, cough, wedding invitations, cough). Which is why, a few weeks (or months) out from your wedding, one of the best things you can do for sanity is to wildly slash any remaining projects from your to-do list that your heart just isn’t in anymore.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t still… have things, or have them affordably. You just don’t have to make them. So today, in partnership with Zazzle, we’re bringing you nine #lazygirl wedding solutions, for when you just can’t DIY another damn thing. But before I get started, here are some things I learned while browsing Zazzle for my own imaginary wedding (the one in which I sleep more).

  • THE INVENTORY IS DEEP. And the search tool is your friend. Zazzle has a mixture of classic and modern styles, and part of the appeal is the sheer volume of it all. But if you know you want watercolor invitations, or geometric table numbers, or a chalkboard seating chart, just do yourself a favor and take the shortcut to getting there. Sure, you might miss out on something you didn’t even know you wanted (there are faux glitter table numbers?!), but crawling through all the options almost defeats the purpose of taking the #lazygirl way out. So remember, done is better than perfect.
  • YOU CAN CUSTOMIZE IF YOU WANT TO, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO. The majority of designs you’ll find on Zazzle have a customization option, which if you click, will take you to a set of tools that allow you to change text, edit fonts, and add and move elements around. You can keep it simple and just change the color or style of the fonts, or go full tilt and move things around like I did below, which still only took a fraction of the time it would have taken me to design myself. A fraction of a fraction, even.

  • IF YOU’RE ORDERING THINGS LIKE TABLE NUMBERS, YOU HAVE TO GO ONE AT A TIME: The product examples on Zazzle are pre-filled with sample table numbers, last names, etc., to show you how they might look in real life. But you’ll need to change those things before placing your order. If you’re ordering table numbers, for example, you’ll need to go through and add each individual number to your cart (table one, add to cart, table two, add to cart, and so on). But if you simply add twenty of the below table numbers to your cart at the same time, you’re going to get twenty table number twelves in return:

table card 1

  • PRICING GOES WAAAY DOWN WITH VOLUME ORDERS. On most websites you usually need to order many hundreds of something before you start to see a significant discount per item. But with Zazzle you might save 25% just by ordering ten pieces or more, and it often goes up to more than 40% when you get close to a hundred. Which means those $2.00 invitations you were eyeing are now less than $1.50 each. Score.
  • ZAZZLE IS NEVER NOT HAVING A SALE. Like, ever.

So with that in mind, here are seven things from Zazzle you can throw not a whole lot of money at to cross off your list:

1. SEATING CHARTS: There are some parts of your wedding decor that really just need to function well. Stylish is just a bonus. Zazzle has predesigned seating charts that you can fill in with your guest names and get printed for $20 to $50, depending on what size poster you want. (Watercolor seating chart.)

2. FABRIC BACKDROPS. Okay, so you were totally going to make our lazygirl no-sew backdrop until you realized maybe you’re too lazy even for that. Totally cool. Get a yard or two of fabric from Zazzle and hang it outside for a ceremony backdrop, or use it for an impromptu photobooth setup. The image featured here is one yard of Zazzle fabric, which, when hung this way, is three feet wide and between four-and-a-half and five feet tall. Bonus: you can reuse the fabric in your home later. (Abstract triangle fabric.)

3. ESCORT CARDS: Escort cards are another one of those decor items that mostly needs to do its job first and worry about looking nice later. And while Pinterest is rife with ideas for how you can repurpose nineteenth century artillery shells for creative escort card decor (or whatever tomorrow’s trend is), the truth is, paper ones are just as stylish and probably way less haunted. So, win? (Escort Cards; see our picks here.)

4. TABLE NUMBERS: See above, re: escort cards. Bonus: these table numbers are about a dollar a piece, which makes them almost as cost effective as printing at home. (Table Numbers; see our picks here.)

5. GIFTS & SWAG: While it’s absolutely not necessary to buy gifts for people for your wedding, coming up with unique presents for our wedding party members was easily the high point of planning for Michael and me (you can tell yourself you’re planning, when you’re really shopping). The problem? Most wedding swag is… what’s the nice word… really not feminist. But with Zazzle, you can personalize gifts in a bunch of different ways that don’t involve wearing a t-shirt that says “Best Bridesmaid 4Life,” either by finding gifts that pertain to your crew’s interests (see library card luggage tag above) or that are just plain… useful (see cosmetic bag above). (Nail Wraps, Luggage Tags, Cosmetic Bags.)

6. RECEPTION SIGNAGE: If you need to inform your guests of where to go and what to do when they get there, then file this under: why bother making, when you can buy? Time = Saved. (All reception signage.)

7. affordable Invitations and Save the Dates: Once upon a time, I told myself the only way to get cute, affordable invitations that matched my aesthetic was to make them. (Cough, slave over them.) But Zazzle has added a ton of new designs to their invitation collection, and most of them are around $2 each (you can even get foil invites or under two bucks), so you don’t have to make my mistake. In fact, I was able to replicate the design I slaved over for hours, with just a few clicks inside an existing Zazzle design.

8. Pretty much whatever else you can imagine: Sometimes the fun part of wedding planning is distracting yourself with useless projects (we should make temporary tattoos with our wedding hashtag!) so that you don’t have to think about the fact that you haven’t exactly finalized a seating plan yet. So whether that means your wedding obviously needs donut buttons as escort cards, or if your wedding crew should have matching t-shirts (because, duh), you can lose yourself for hours customizing everything on Zazzle from mugs to foodstuffs to tote bags. (Tattoos, t-shirt and mug customized by APW.)

9: THIS UNICORN. Don’t even try telling me your wedding doesn’t need one. (Faux taxidermy unicorn, also available with glitter horn.)